Sign the White House Petition on Open Access to Research Today!

The Obama Administration has been actively considering the issue of Public Access to the results of Federally Funded research for the past several years. There is now a brief, critical window of opportunity for librarians, scholars, and taxpayers at large to demonstrate that we firmly believe open access to federally funded research should be a high priority for the Administration to act on right now. To help accomplish this, today, May 21st, a petition calling for Public Access to all Federally Funded Research has been posted to the White House’s “We the People” Website. If the petition garners 25,000 signatures within 30 days, it will be reviewed by White House staff, and considered for action.

By joining others in the community and encouraging members to sign a petition to the White House, ACRL continues its longstanding commitment to open access to federally funded research. In recent months ACRL has communicated our position to the White House with comments about public access and digital data, and it is the number one priority on ACRL’s legislative agenda for 2012. We ask now that you please sign the petition and encourage friends, family, colleagues in the library and across campus to join in. To sign the petition, you must be at least 13 years old and have a valid email address. Signing is easy, it’s fast, and it can have an enormous impact on our chances of expanding access to the results of scientific research that we have helped to fund.

Please take a moment today to not only sign onto the petition, but to spread the word far and wide. Consider a blog post, an email, a Tweet (use hashtag #openaccess), a Facebook share, an action in your library or on your campus – anything that tells as many people as possible “I support this petition, I’m signing this petition, and you should, too.”